I first saw director Kevin Connor's silly monster movie Warlords of Atlantis at the cinema in 1978, and although I was only 10 at the time, I still came away very disappointed; the problem was that I, along with most of the rest of the world, had not long witnessed the cinematic marvel that was Star Wars, which had set a new standard for special effects driven adventures, and Connor's brand of fantasy film-making now seemed very primitive by comparison.
The narrative structure to Warlords is almost virtually identical to Connor's previous three fantasy adventures, The Land that Time Forgot, The People That Time Forgot and At The Earth's Core: a scientific expedition discovers a lost civilisation (in this case, Atlantis) and encounters a variety of badly realised rubber monsters, after which the adventurers barely escape with their lives. It's also very similar in terms of production values and technical prowess: the performances are hammy, the script makes very little sense, and the special effects are diabolical.
These days, however, it's those very qualities that make this kind of flick so much more fun to watch now than back in the day. The camp nature of the script, Doug McClure's paunch, the unconvincing hand puppet creatures, the giant plastic octopus with uncontrollable tentacles, the awful Atlantean fashion, flying piranhas launched clumsily at the actors by crew members off-screen: what I found embarrassingly bad as a child I now find rather charming in its ineptitude.
The narrative structure to Warlords is almost virtually identical to Connor's previous three fantasy adventures, The Land that Time Forgot, The People That Time Forgot and At The Earth's Core: a scientific expedition discovers a lost civilisation (in this case, Atlantis) and encounters a variety of badly realised rubber monsters, after which the adventurers barely escape with their lives. It's also very similar in terms of production values and technical prowess: the performances are hammy, the script makes very little sense, and the special effects are diabolical.
These days, however, it's those very qualities that make this kind of flick so much more fun to watch now than back in the day. The camp nature of the script, Doug McClure's paunch, the unconvincing hand puppet creatures, the giant plastic octopus with uncontrollable tentacles, the awful Atlantean fashion, flying piranhas launched clumsily at the actors by crew members off-screen: what I found embarrassingly bad as a child I now find rather charming in its ineptitude.